Sour Candy
by Edmondia Dantes Redux
Summary: On the taste of apples and sugar. L/Light.


**_Sour Candy  
by Edmondia Dantes_**

Disclaimer: Not mine.

AN: Requested as part of a drabble/ficlet meme on LiveJournal by Hayley Bob Comet, for the pairing L/Light, with the prompt of "apple."

- - -

Since he's been chained to Ryuuzaki, Light's gotten used to waking up trembling, a little too cold and heartbeat racing a little too fast, and he hates that he can't even remember the nightmares that wreck his sleeping schedule and leave him tense and jittery the morning after.

L doesn't say a word when he wakes up, just shifts his weight around and continues tapping at the laptop propped on the bed before him, face washed stark white in the darkness of their room. Light doesn't like it at all, it makes him look more corpselike than usual, and the thought makes him tremble with something that is both much more and far less than fear.

He untangles himself from the mess he's made of the blankets, swiping a hand heavily across his face in a desperate attempt to regain some semblance of normalcy, then remembers who he's sharing a bed with and decides it's not worth the effort - L would see right through it, anyway, and he's much too tired to even pretend to act like everything is normal. So instead he detangles the chain from where it's wound around his wrist tight enough to impede his circulation, scootches closer, and peers around the folded-up jumble of L's arms and legs to catch a bleary glimpse of what he's working on.

L glances down at him, dark eyes unreadable as always, and silently and solemnly plucks the lollipop he's been sucking out of his mouth and quietly dangles it in front of his nose. It's a strange, disgusting kind of reassurance, like an ill-timed kiss from his mother or an embarrassing pat on the head from his father, and it's a measure of how far he's fallen that he closes his mouth around it without a second thought.

His eyes fly open, and he reels back, gagging, when the flavor hits his tongue. L just watches him as he hurls the candy away in the general direction of the wastebasket, stomach churning. He clamps a hand over his mouth, wishing desperately to simply will the taste away, or at the very least for a toothbrush and paste, and glares at L through burning eyes. "Is this your sick idea of a joke?" he hisses, free hand clenching around the chain hard enough that he can feel the links bite into his skin.

"Did you not like the flavor?" he asks blandly, head tilting a little, and it's remarkable how much Light would like to punch him, shake him out of that emotionless state and turn him into something that remotely resembled a human being, except picking a fight would get him nowhere, so he sits and fumes and clenches his hands even more tightly around thick cotton and stainless steel.

"Sour apple?!" he snarls roughly, a little unnerved at the force of his own reaction, a little sickened by the taste that doesn't seem to be going away. "You're sick, Ryuuzaki!"

L licks his lips thoughtfully. "I rather enjoyed it, myself."

Light stares at him. "...you're really fucked up, you know that?"

L just smiles. "So are you."

Sitting there in the dark, the taste of sick-sweet on his tongue, Light can't deny it. Still... "Don't ever do that again."

"Hmn." L turns back to his computer, humming tunelessly under his breath, and Light breathes out a sigh and lies down next to him, propping his chin on his folded arms and half watching what he's doing, half drowsing. It's not worth staying angry, and he's tired anyway, so it's more practical to just leave it, and to try not to worry about how far his little outburst has slid him up or down in L's little probability-analysis.

"I don't like apples," he mumbles sleepily after half an hour of watching L's fingers tap delicately at the keys. "I don't like them at all."

When he tilts his head and looks down at him thoughtfully, L's gaze is frank, black, and absolutely terrifying. "Not anymore," L corrects him gently, and he hates that he doesn't know how to deny it, hates that anything he protests will wither and die before it passes his lips.

"...we'll catch Kira," he says after a long moment's silence. "We'll do it, and then the world will go back to normal." _I am not Kira I am not Kira I am not Kira I am not I am not I am not - _

He's stunned into a truly idiotic silence when L leans down and brushes a cool, dry kiss against his forehead. So he lies there and stares up at him, suddenly and silently afraid of the future, of what he can't see coming, and he is abruptly, absolutely certain that they're hurtling into a deep dark place that they will never be able to escape from, and it's already too late to stop.

"...Ryuuzaki?" the pseudonym slips out as a whisper or a sigh, and L blinks, once, and he reaches a trembling hand up to brush his fingers over the porcelain curve of his cheek, to curl them through messy dark hair and pull, just that little bit too hard that would frighten anyone else, would let too much of himself slip past through his mask of perfection, but L knows him, all of him, maybe even better than he knows himself, and he is much too wise and far too trusting (though they both know he knows better) to ever really be afraid of him. _I'm going to kill you what if I kill you we both know if I'm Kira I'll kill you so why, why why why do you allow this?_

L leans down and kisses his lips, light and delicate, and his mouth tastes of the candy that so repulsed him, sick-sweet and perfect, and he knows in this single moment that the two of them are doomed to one another, doomed for one another, and he will never want anyone the way he wants L right now. Light reaches up, clutches at the white cotton of his shirt, tugs him down and closer, suddenly desperate for more reasons than he can bear to think of, and the only certainty in the world is that L is with him, L will not leave him, and L thinks (knows) he is a murderer and that absolute certainty is the most terrifying thing of all.

Four months and a lifetime later, their parting kiss is as cold as it is tender, and Light bites down hard into a fresh apple to wash the taste of corpse out of his mouth. It's not sweet enough, so he tosses it to Ryuk, and later, at the quiet misery of the funeral, he sucks silently on his candy and does not grieve for his beloved. Later in the evening, when he kisses Misa's soft, dangerous mouth, she giggles in delight at the flavor that lingers on his lips.

He never touches the candy again.

- - -


End file.
